Broken Pieces
by Ariyah
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of Manhattan, Clint and Natasha cope with Phil's death. By Meryah.
1. Learning to Cope

Natasha eyes her silent partner. He's sinking into his chair, one foot up on hers, pulling out his Russian copy of _Crime and Punishment_, a sure sign of his trying not to think. He doesn't look up when the waitress puts the shawarma in front of him, just reaches out for the wrap and rips a piece off with one hand while the other keeps the book open.

She knows there's only a thin barrier keeping them both from collapse, and hopes it wouldn't happen yet.

They part later. Tony takes Steve and Bruce back to Stark Tower; only he keeps calling it 'Avengers' Tower' and insists they all need to come there, promising them multiple floors each. Fury sends an agent (trust him to know where they are) to pick up Clint and Natasha, and ends up taking Thor along too, since he wants to see his brother.

In the infirmary, they bandage each other up; Clint's knee is pretty bad, and Natasha makes an exasperated comment about falling out of windows, and Clint responds by saying he jumped and it's almost normal.  
Except there should be a third person there.  
Clint hijacks a SHIELD car and they leave the compound (and a probably irate Fury) behind and just start driving. Once out of the city, Clint accelerates more and more and Natasha, who was reciting the words for _Finlandia_ in the original Finnish over and over to keep from thinking suddenly realizes they're going past one hundred miles an hour.  
'Barton...'  
He doesn't respond.

_Pay attention, Barton, you almost hit that truck. Phil - don't think about that – one hundred bottles of beer on the wall – I wasn't there to help. I wasn't there. I was leading an attack against everything he stood for. I wasn't there when my handler – Coulson – Phil – my __brother__– was dying. He died. He's _dead_. He's _gone_. __He's dead.__ Gone. Gonegonegonegone_-gone-

'Clint! Черт возьми, Clint, slow down!'

His grip on the steering wheel is white-knuckled and it takes a moment before his foot leaves the accelerator. He can feel moisture stinging his eyelids and can't remember the last time he cried about _anything_; and then he's losing it. He brakes sharply, swinging onto a gravel road and skidding to a stop. He can't see anything anymore, anything but Phil's face the last time he saw him. A ragged breath escapes him.

He pulls over and leans his arms against the wheel, dropping his head onto them, and then his shoulders start shaking. Natasha's never seen him cry before; he's always pulled through the hardest situations with terrible jokes, but this is _Coulson_ and she can feel his loss too. After Clint, he was the first to accept her into SHIELD, even before Fury trusted her, simply because Clint did. She opens her door, crosses to the driver's side and opens his, then takes his hand. He comes without saying a word, still breathing hard, and she leans against the side of the car, arms holding him, trying to offer comfort. He cries then, soaking her shirt and she can feel her own eyes watering. Coulson was their only family, and now he's gone.  
Clint recovers slowly, shuddering gasps still escaping him, and sits back up.  
'I'm so sorry, Nat,' he says. 'I wasn't there. It's my fault; _I wasn't there!_'  
'Stop that right there,' she tells him. 'It's Loki's fault, not yours. You weren't trained for any of what happened, and you can't be blamed for it.'  
He looks into her eyes, desperately wanting something, _anything_, to change, to bring Phil back saying, 'It was just a prank.' But he knows it won't happen. Phil is dead. He's gone. Nothing can change that, nothing at all. They sit there, side by side, backs against the car, for a long time.

Clint is on the passenger side now, with his eyes closed, fighting a headache. They aren't sure where they're going; somewhere maybe where they can forget for a while, only what place is that? Phil was Clint's handler for almost eleven years, and both of theirs for eight. They've been all over the world with him. He was more than the person on the other side of the comm., he was Clint's brother in all the ways that mattered, a better brother than Barney had ever been.

They drive straight south for almost thirty hours, switching off regularly and napping in the passenger side, both silent, until they reach Colorado. Natasha breaks the quiet as she slides back into the driver's seat.  
'Do you think we should go back?'  
He looks away, out over the mountains, before bringing his eyes back to her.  
'Nat-'  
He can't finish, just folds himself into the seat and slams the door. She puts the car in gear again and continues west.

They stop in Grand Junction, pulling over beside an actual truck-stop restaurant, since Natasha flatly refused to eat any more heat-lamp-warmed Bavarian sausages. The place isn't wonderful, but the food, Clint assures her, is top-notch. And then she laughs at him for using a word like that, and he grins and for a moment everything is normal.  
Natasha sits well away from the window in a little booth where she can see the entrance and Clint slides in next to her. The waitress is friendly, if a little sleep-deprived, and the food, as promised, is excellent. Clint's got something on his mind and Natasha is fine with silence, so the only noises come from the kitchen and the highway outside. They're almost finished before Clint speaks.  
'Tasha, I wanna marry you.'  
Her fork freezes halfway to her mouth, eyes widening in surprise, and he hurries on.  
'I wanted to talk to you earlier, but then all this craziness started happening and we got too busy. And – It-' he makes a frustrated noise. 'I was up there on the roof, couldn't even _see_ you, felt like I was useless… I don' want that to happen again, Nat. I don't wanna be without you.' He stares at his hands for a moment, then looks her in the face. 'I love you.'

There's something in his eyes – Natasha recalls a day, almost nine years earlier, when he finally caught up with her and actually had the arrow at her throat before he really looked at her. His gaze now is similar, but there's something more in it. She's seen it in marks that she was sent by the Red Room to seduce, seen it in the unguarded moments before she ripped information from them and sent them to their graves, but with Clint it's as far unrelated to that lust as poison is from water. _Nothing_ she's ever done has prepared her for this.  
She's been broken, but so has Barton, and her jagged edges fit against his somehow and for the first time since the Red Room she's whole.  
'Yes,' she says simply, and takes his hand.


	2. Settling In

'We do need to be realistic about this,' Bruce says. It's a little over a week since the Battle of Manhattan and Clint and Natasha are back in New York. Fury sent them over to Stark Tower, saying Stark put in a request for the two of them to live there permanently, and after only a slight hesitation, they accepted. Now, sitting in the new living room seven floors from the roof and eating sandwiches, they're discussing terms of living with four other people ranging from extremely sensible (Pepper Potts, Stark's girlfriend) to completely nuts (Tony Stark). Six months earlier, neither had known other worlds existed. Now, they had fought back-to-back with an alien, a man with superhuman abilities, a nutcase with a hole in his chest who insists on first names for _everybody_, and a guy who turns into a monster when he gets mad.

_Clint Barton, this is your life._

'We're a bunch of dysfunctional people trying to live together,' Bruce goes on. 'It's gonna get messy sometimes.'

'Umm,' Steve agrees. 'We could try things like schedules – what about cooking and cleaning?'

Tony puts up a hand.

'You guys do realize, I have a staff for that.'

Clint turns his head to smirk at him.

' Food tastes so much better when you make it yourself, Stark.'

'Okay then,' Pepper says. She's got a STARKpad from somewhere and is busily typing. 'JARVIS, can you put this up for me, please?'

The blue hologram is a list of basic chores, including meals. Beside each chore is a blank space for a name. After some deliberation, they settle on chores done when more than three people are present. Tony protests at actual cleaning, asking what the point in having lots of money is, if not to get other people to do that sort of thing for you. He's overruled by a vote of four to two (Clint agreed with Tony), and Pepper starts assigning names.

'What about Thor?' she asks. Shrugs meet her words.

'I'm not sure even Director Fury knows if he'll come back,' Steve offers. Pepper leaves him off.

By the time everything is finished to everyone's satisfaction, Clint and Natasha's things arrive. Even after almost nine years of living at SHIELD, they haven't accumulated an enormous amount of personal possessions, but Tony and Steve go along to help anyway. Clint is a little surprised at how finished everything is; he supposes that's what happens when billionaires get their houses smashed up.

'So, Fury told us you two share a room,' Tony mentions, cocking an eyebrow and clearly wanting Clint to volunteer what he, Tony, isn't stupid enough to ask straight out. Clint decides not to humour him.

'Yeah. It's easier to sleep with someone at your back,' he says blandly, and dumps a suitcase in the closet.

'Tasha, I'm not putting your stuff away,' he yells out the door. Tony doesn't mention it again. There's only so far you want to push someone who can kill you as easy as breathe.

Bruce and Steve make supper, just spaghetti and tomato sauce. Afterwards, Tony decides that to celebrate the new living arrangements, they're going to start a regular Movie Night.

'At least four a week,' he declares, but Pepper overrides him and puts it down to two at the most. He agrees fake-grumpily and pulls out a selection, evidently deciding that since it was his idea, he gets to pick first. _Chitty Chitty Bang Bang_ (Tony says they've got to start slow, for Steve's sake) is not a movie Clint thought he would enjoy, but he finds it entertaining.

Much later, his back pressed up against Natasha's and the smell of the new paint in their bedroom filling his nostrils, Clint wonders aloud how long it'll take for Tony to get fed up with them.

'Shut up and go to sleep, Barton,' Natasha tells him. 'We're on breakfast tomorrow.'


End file.
